My Blog Is Moving

Hey all,

Just to let you know i am moving away from WordPress to add my blog to my site.

To keep following my blog just visit http://www.krismunro.co.uk/blog

Thanks see you there

AppleTV 2.4 Update – Review

So nearly one year on and I am still loving my AppleTV. The main reason I got it was to get Diggnation and other podcasts to play on my TV in HD, but I have now started to use more of its features i.e. Renting movies, flickr etc

This 2.4 update, I find is a little more responsive, gestures on the remote app and the cover art images download a lot faster.

With this recent update I decided I would try and sync my iPhone 3GS, and use the remote app and see what its like. One word “Amazing”, its a lot more responsive and I find it 100% better to use than the remote that comes with the product.

Overall a really nice update and look forward to many more.

LG KU990 Viewty – Final Review

Specifications : http://www.gsmarena.com/lg_ku990_viewty-2070.php

Review : So I have had this mobile now for 18 months, when I got it the phone was only out a few weeks.

Overall its been a good phone, it does what its meant to do but there have been issues with it and I also know a few folk who have the same phone and have had the same issues.

The first issue is the touch screen, its not the best and sometimes you need to press on the screen a few times for it to register the action.

The second issue is that more recently the system has started to hang, and the only way to fix this is to remove the battery and do a hard reboot.

These 2 issues above, have also been reported by 3 friends who have the same phone. One other friend has not had these issues, but finds the battery lift to be very poor…I cant comment as I can leave it for a week and then I need to charge it.

That is the only two issues I have had with this phone, apart from that its great but now those 2 issues above are occurring more and more. I know LG released a second version of this phone, so I hope they fixed these issues.

My contract runs out next Tuesday (23rd June), so I will be moving to the new iPhone 3GS so expect a little review on that.

Overall its a good phone that does what its meant to do, the camera is very nice but needs perfect light conditions.

My Rating : 6 out of 10

AppleTV – Review 2

I have been playing with more of its features and thought I would share my thoughts.

Movie Renting :

One thing I couldn’t find online was clear information on once you rent, what happens and what do I need to do. I decided to rent Iron Man in HD to test it out, I started the download / rent  just before going to sleep and it was ready to watch in the morning.

The movie sits on your AppleTV box for a long period of time, but once you start watching you have 48hrs to watch it as many times as you like then you delete it.

The HD quality for Iron Man was very good, my only complaint is I had to turn my TV volume up to around the 60/70% for it to be at a good level. This could just be a setting I have missed on my AppleTV or just the way its encoded, but putting that aside the quality was amazing.

Photos

I have a flicker account that I use to store photos taken within Secondlife of any AICR event I host, so I decided to take it over fully and use it for my photos and the AICR ones.

Adding the account was easy, though a keyboard would have been faster at inputting my details. Once the account had been added, I clicked the gallery I wanted and selected slide show….very nice it add a subtle animation and changes the photos at a nice time.

YouTube

I know that YouTube is low quality but I wanted to see how it looked on a TV. Its not bad, granted its not great quality but hey its youtube and you know that. I will be interested to see how the new HD quality tubes are.

So overall so far so good, I am going to try and rent Kung Fu Panda but I will do the SD version and see how that is.

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AppleTV – First Impression Review

Part of my Christmas I received an AppleTV, I had been wanting one for a good few months mostly for the movie rental and podcast features. I have only played with it for a short period, but I thought I would post my first impressions and see how they change over time.

The Good :

• Design : The design of this box is very cool, it looks good just sitting there…very stylish.
• Features : A lot of the features are very cool, you can download and watch podcasts in HD, rent movies in HD, purchase movies and music, stream photos to your TV etc etc all very cool features.
• Interface : The look of the interface is very nice, it looks very slick and nice to look at. Cover flow photos appear when listening to music, the layout is ok and easy to understand.

The Bad :

• Interface : I know I had this in the good but it also comes with the bad….with Take 2 the interface has been improved but its still not perfect, i feel that I am clicking way too much to get to places.
• On/Off Switch : Yes a very small features but its always on and unless you have Take 2 which now includes a standby option…the only way to turn it off is to pull the plug..not a great way to turn it off.
• Hot : If you have this on for a while it heats up and I havent had it on over night, so I dont know if it gets REALLY hot….I cant see any breathers….

I know the bad points are nothing major.

So I have still to test an HD rental, I think for this I will rent it that night…let it download over night and watch it the next day. So far everything I have tested just works, I am a little dissapointed that the iPod Touch Remote app cant control the menu but hey it comes with a little remote.

So far I am liking this product very much….now to play with it more

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To Mac or not to Mac

I used to be a windows user up until about 2 years ago, then I started to use Ubuntu as my main operating system.

Over the past 2 years I have really enjoyed learning about Linux, and also watching how Ubuntu has improved. The applications I use are 99% Gnome and only 1 application KDE based (Amarok). The laptop I am using is an HP Pavilion DVP6000 and I am now finding its getting very warm, when trying to do a few tasks….so I am now looking for a replacement.

I have had my eye on a Sony Viao, as I purchased one so I could use iTunes and SAM Broadcaster. It runs vista and YUK its crap….but leaving that aside its a fantastic laptop.

I have also started to look at Mac Books, though I have never been a fan of the OS. I have been reading up on OSX and I really like the full intigration it has with the apps, the iPhone etc. This has got me thinking about possibly getting a Mac Book now.

I have looked and checked and 99% of the applications I use on Ubuntu, are already ported over to OSX which is great. I then noticed that the graphics card on the Mac Book are a little lower than the Viao i was looking at…so I checked out the Mac Book Pro which has at the time of posting this a 8600GT which is a nice card. The battery life on the Mac’s are really good about 4 to 5 hours, where with my HP its about 30/45mins under Ubuntu which is pants.

So now I am highly thinking about getting a MBP, but not yet probably early 2009 as I have heard they will be doing a refresh to include BluRay support and BluRay drive which will mean a more up to date laptop.

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Orb (MyCast Streamer) – Review

http://www.orb.com/

Orb is free software that lets you stream your photos, videos and audio to another computer or games console. I recently got a Wii and wanted to stream some of my web video podcasts to my TV, rather than watching them on the laptop. I came across Orb and decided to give it a go, the download is only around 23mb and installation and setup only takes a few minutes.

I pointed Orb at the itunes download folder, my video folder and my photos folder. I then downloaded Opera on the Wii and visited the streaming website and BINGO, i could stream all my media.

The downpart to this is that Orb reincodes all your videos into Flash on the fly, so the quality isnt great…dont get me wrong its very watchable but just not as good as the original file.

I used this link to get me started : lifehacker.com/357869/use-your-wii-as-a-media-center 

If they improve the quality this will get a 10 out of 10 from me, but till then its a 9.

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Nintendo Wii – Review

I waited a long time for my Wii to arrive, so now its time to review it.

The Wii is mostly a games console for family, kids and with friends, as most of the games available at present cater for this target audience. There are a few more adult style games available, but not as many as it could have and this is where it lacks.

The Wii is very fun to play alone and even more fun with friends, the Wii come with Wii sports which is very espechally the tennis, golf and bowling. The Wii menu’s are very easy to use and understand, for all ages which is what you want.

I also purchased Mortal Kombat for the Wii, as am a big MK fan and it plays very well am like a big kid playing the game again   I am also wanting House of the Dead plus its gun addon

The downpoints to the Wii are you need to pay to get the Opera browser, its not a high def console and the very poor storage amount.

Overall its a very arcade style console, aimed at groups, familys and kids. Its a very fun console and I can see a good future ahead for the Wii if they fix some of these small issues.

My Rating : 8 out of 10

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Ipod Touch – Review

www.apple.com/ipodtouch/

I used to use a 4gb Creative Muvo, which i loved but when I saw the Ipod Touch i fell in love. It wasn’t just an mp3 player but you could surf the net, coverart etc etc.

I have had my Ipod Touch now for over a month and this is what I think :

ITS GREAT! now with the 2.0 software and the apps its the best mp3 player out there, I love listening to my music, checking my emails all from this (when i get a wifi connection). The coverflow is really cool, though I do need to sort out my id tags as most of my albums dont have art yet lol.

I would highly recomend this to anyone wanting a new mp3 player, the style, feel, design and battery life is fantastic plus with the applications its even more cool

My Rating : 9 out of 10

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HP Pavilion DVP6000 – Final Review

I have been using this on a daily basis for a year now, I removed Vista and installed Ubuntu as my main operating system. Overall its a nice looking laptop, the spec’s are good but there is one major fault with it…..the fan comes on a lot due to it heating up very easily…duno why..prob a build fault.

Would i recommend it…due to it heating up a lot no…if it didn’t do that 100% yes.

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Tags: HP, Pavilion, DV6000, review, final